About the job

Summary

The Capital Directorate within the Department for Education is a dynamic environment that delivers multi-billion-pound construction programmes within the government industrial strategy to transform the UK construction sector. Taking over 1000 land transactions and consents annually, we are one of the largest public sector construction clients in England, with a capital budget of £23.5bn in 2020-21, and over 600 school building projects.

There is a shared sense of pride amongst our 500-strong team knowing the real difference a great school with modern facilities can make to local communities. And there is nothing better than seeing the excitement of children, teachers and parents as our projects take shape on sites.

Job description

We are looking for a Delivery Manager to be an integral part of the Department for Education Capital Data & Systems delivery team. You will be responsible for software and technology developments critical to the delivery and development of DfE Capital programmes. You will have a pragmatic outlook, and you will be able to deliver at pace to achieve tactical and strategic outcomes whilst maintaining and managing engagement with team members and project stakeholders.

Responsibilities

A key element to success will be your role in effectively building relationships with and managing 3rd party suppliers, through acting as a service manager or working on delivery in an inter-organisation team.

You will be comfortable working in an agile setting managing delivery through sprints as well as a wider delivery roadmap of key milestones and dependencies.

You will also:

• Work across DfE Capital teams and the DfE data and systems team to plan, deliver, prioritise and maintain activities at pace.

• Work with the team to collaborate, communicate and focus on what is most important.

• Use retrospectives to monitor and evaluate activities to communicate learnings back to the team and embed the lessons in your work.

• Ensure activities are planned and measurable with acceptance criteria.

• Participate in the team’s engagement in wider governance.

• Communicate between the technical and non-technical stakeholders.

• Engage with users and stakeholders through a range of channels.

• Act as a conduit and intelligent customer between business teams and suppliers.

Essential criteria:

We would like to hear from you if you can show evidence of having the below skills/experience.

- Experience of delivery managing project teams and being able to maintain momentum and pace throughout the project lifecycle.

- Experience of proactively managing iterative project delivery plans with dependencies and reporting on project status in a formal project methodology environment.

- Management of risks and issues.

- Delivery managing suppliers as a service to deliver outcomes.

- Monitoring cost and budget with escalation of issues as required.

- Working with users and stakeholders to achieve their outcomes.

Desirable criteria:

- Experience of working in an Agile delivery environment.

- Experience of evaluating and using the lessons learnt from project activities.

- Understanding of delivering projects within a government department including GDS service standards.

Desirable criteria will only be assessed in the event of a tie break situation to make an informed decision.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Delivering at Pace
• Working Together

Benefits

At the Department for Education we offer

• An environment with flexible working options, such as job sharing, term-time working, flexitime and compressed hours.

• We offer an extensive range of learning and development opportunities on both our own internal learning system and also via the Civil Service Learning platform. Both of these have online and classroom learning sessions that you can sign up to. We will fund qualifications that are directly relevant to your role and we are developing career progression paths and schemes that can help you fulfil your potential.

• We offer temporary internal development opportunities to all eligible employees when they arise. There are many opportunities to network and work across government and we have numerous apprentice schemes across all the different professions in the organisation.

• A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity.

• A generous annual leave allowance of 25 days leave, increasing by 1 day every year to a maximum of 30 days after five years’ service. In addition, all staff receive the Queen’s Birthday privilege holiday and 8 days’ bank and public holidays.

• A wide variety of staff support networks including a Women's Network, BAME Network, Wellbeing Network, and many more.

• As a member of the DfE, you will be entitled to join the highly competitive Civil Service Pension Scheme, which many experts agree is one of the most generous in the UK.

• Paid special leave for volunteering.

• Sports & activity groups including gym membership discounts.

• Cycle to Work scheme and loans towards bicycle purchase.

For further information on our pension schemes please refer to the following website: Civil Service Pensions website.